This week, show host Avanish Sahai sits down with Erica Volini, the SVP responsible for Global Partnerships at ServiceNow.
Avanish and Erica have a robust discussion around:
Guest: Erica Volini
Erica Volini is the Senior Vice President responsible for Global Partnerships at ServiceNow. In that role, she has the privilege of managing the over 2,000 partners that are part of the ServiceNow global ecosystem. Before joining ServiceNow in 2021, she spent over two decades at Deloitte Consulting leading the Human Capital business and as the Chief Commercial Officer for Deloitte’s overall relationship with ServiceNow. She has written and talked extensively around the Future of Work and is a recognized expert in that space. She got her BS ILR from Cornell University and while she’s a true-blue New Yorker, she currently resides in Scottsdale, AZ with her husband and son with a new baby on the way in just a few short weeks.
Host: Avanish Sahai
Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.
About Tidemark
Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.
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Avanish: Welcome to another edition of The Platform Journey podcast. This is Avanish Sahai, your host. Today we have another fantastic guest, Erica Volini. Erica is SVP of Alliances and Channels at ServiceNow and has had a very distinguished career before that. I’m super thrilled to have this conversation. Erica, welcome to The Platform Journey.
Erica: Thank you for having me. I’m excited about today’s conversation.
Avanish: Awesome. Let’s just start with your personal background and journey. I alluded to it in my introduction, but it’s a lot richer than that. Talk about your personal career, your journey, and what’s gotten you to this role at ServiceNow.
Erica: Absolutely. I feel like when some people talk about their career journey, they have a million stops along the way, and I just have one stop. [Laughs] But, to your point, it was a great professional journey.
I started my career at Deloitte. Like many who join consulting, I thought I was going to be there for two years, and stayed for 23. It was phenomenal. I did a ton of different types of work at Deloitte, which is why it’s a great place to start a career. Everything from change management, to training to compensation work, to benefits work. I ended up moving into HR technology, and ultimately led Deloitte’s US and global human capital practice for many years. I had the good fortune of helping to introduce Deloitte into the future of work and that practice phase, which I am super passionate about.
Along the way, given that ServiceNow is a work platform—which I’m sure we’ll talk about on The Platform Journey—I got to interact with ServiceNow and really fell in love with the company. Ironically, in what ended up being my last year at Deloitte, they offered me the opportunity to also be the chief commercial officer for Deloitte’s relationship with ServiceNow. It was fabulous, because I got to see ServiceNow from a different angle. I ultimately decided, after 23 years, it was a good time to try something new. I had been in the consulting world, I was clearly a consultant, and that was sort of my brand—but I felt like it wasn’t the end of my story.
I ended up retiring from Deloitte—they were wonderful in that process—and joined ServiceNow about 18 months ago. I came in to help transform the way we were working with partners, which I was super excited about. Ultimately, like any good consultant, transformation is pretty much in my DNA. It’s what I love to do. I came in, looked at the go-to-market strategy, and learned a lot about working in a tech company. Then, just a few months ago (in January) I ended up taking over all of partnerships in ServiceNow. And here we are!
I always tell people, it’s amazing validation to step away from a career at a company that I had been part of since I was 20, and rejoin a company in my 40s—as a mom, as a wife, with a totally different head set—and be able to start anew with all of that learning and experience. It has been incredible. It’s also been pretty amazing to see the things that hold true regardless of what role and what company I’m a part of: how I lead, and how I approach transformation. I think it just reconfirmed for me that transformation is what I love to do, no matter where it is and no matter what it’s about. It has been pretty awesome. That’s a little bit about me.
Avanish: That is amazing. So, first of all, you’ve done it the old-fashioned way. Nowadays, most of us—myself included—go to do something different every four or five years. I think doing it the way you have, bringing that experience and expertise, is huge. We’ll talk more about that.
In the interest of full disclosure, my son is a consultant at Deloitte in his third year. He’s following in what I think are great footsteps. And we met when you were still at Deloitte, as we were forming a deeper relationship. That was I think in 2018, so it’s been a little while, but it’s just awesome to see you on this side.
Erica, before we go into some of the things you’re doing at ServiceNow—you spent 23 years at Deloitte. What are one or two of the most memorable, career-changing, or life-changing experiences that you had there? Talk a bit about how that formed your current self.
Erica: Oh, there are so many to choose from, after 23 years. I’ll give two. There are two that really stick out to me. One is, up until I was a manager—so for the first six or seven years of my career—I was very much on the process, change, and people side. Then I got on a project around HR outsourcing—it was in the heyday of HR outsourcing, for those who remember.
I started to learn about the power of technology: how technology can transform, and how, when used appropriately, it can really change the way that work is happening, the way you motivate people, and how it’s all interconnected. That definitely was a watershed moment for me. It may seem basic now, but at the time, seeing that in action—being able to create that connection between the work people are doing, the technology that supports that work, and bringing those two things together to drive behavioral change—sparked a big passion in me that ended up being about the future of work. It’s a lot of what I believe that ServiceNow is about, at the core, which I know we’ll talk about.
That’s definitely one moment that sticks out to me, and it was on this project for the State of Florida. It was a crazy project, because we were bringing a new technology system and a new set of processes into the state. I was responsible for driving the training on all of that, so, I would go… I did training in jails; I did training on farms. We had to go to every single state worker and meet them where they were at. It just was such a personal experience, and I really think I grew a lot through that.
The second thing I will tell you about was after I became a partner in 2008. My mentor at the time, who was the head of the practice, said, “You know what, Erica, can you, as a new partner, be responsible for campus recruiting?” I thought, well, I guess I could. Who was the current leader for this? No one even knew. I thought, oh my gosh, this is like not even an important role. I’m a new partner!
But of course, since my mentor asked, I said “Sure. I’m going to go do it.” I really dove into it. That year, I ended up going to 50 different campuses, and I started a newsletter called Thoughts from the Field. It fundamentally changed people’s impression of me. It gave me a platform that allowed me to enter as a partner. People knew me as a driver, but now got to see another side of me.
It really taught me an important lesson that I will always remember: it’s not about the role you have. It’s about what you do with the role that you’re given, the opportunity that you’re given. That’s advice I always give to people when they’re starting their career or questioning their career. Even when I took this move into ServiceNow, I think a lot of people were like, you’re a senior partner. Why don’t you go be a CEO? I was like, it’s not about that. It’s about taking advantage of this incredible opportunity for an incredible company to transform. I could get so much out of this. And I have, in the 18 months I’ve been here. I just love that I’m constantly reminded of that. I end up not looking past opportunities that come my way due to things like titles.
Those, to me, are two moments that really stick out.
Avanish: Those are great. I think those are, in general, life lessons, right? 1) It’s not just about the role. It’s about how you make it. And 2) at the end of the day, we all live in the technology world, but it’s about the people. Even with all this discussion around AI and ChatGPT, etc., at the end of the day it’s about people.
I think of all the guests we’ve had so far, you’re the first one, I believe, that’s really been on both sides of the table. Everybody always wants to have a relationship with a Deloitte or an Accenture or some of the other major firms, and now you’re at ServiceNow, where you’ve seen the birthing and the growth of this relationship. I have to ask first, what are some of the lessons learned? For the people who are, say, at a tech company that’s in growth mode, where the board, the CEO, or the C-suite is saying, “Go figure out how we get Deloitte to be a partner. What are we going to do?” What would you say are some of those key things, from your experience on both sides of that equation?
Erica: Number one, by so far and away, is to understand the partner’s business strategy, speak their language, and know what motivates them. One of the first things I did when I came in to ServiceNow was say, “Okay, why do we need to change?” It’s a transformation. I said, ServiceNow, we’re evolving. We need to treat the partner ecosystem differently. The partner industry is changing—let’s put ourselves in their shoes and understand what’s happening with the pressure around profitability, and the fact that the rate-times-hour model doesn’t sustain growth in a world where talent costs more and customers are putting pressure on the number of hours they’re willing to pay for to get value. It’s at that intersection that we find the balance.
I think oftentimes we approach partners in the technology world as like, well of course you want to work with us to help grow your business. My approach is always to understand what your business is. I want you to know that yes, we want you to help us, but we also want to help you. We’re going to speak and understand your language. That goes an incredibly long way. At ServiceNow, we call it intimacy. That’s the kind of experience I want to create. I do really try to take the time to not only reflect that in my own interactions, but also to help educate the team on how to do that, because it’s missing [a lot of the time].
Avanish: Again, spot on. We talk a lot about empathy in general. We’ve talked about customer empathy; this is a clearly partner empathy, right? Put yourself in their shoes. What does it mean to them? Like you said, what is their business strategy? What’s in it for them? Be candid about that. You don’t want to waste anybody’s time because you’re doing it too early, or because you don’t really have something compelling. Trying to force-fit is not going to be a successful use of anybody’s time. Spending time thinking that through makes a lot of sense.
12:45 Erica: Yes. I remember at Deloitte, we would always have technology companies approach like, you really need to understand our product. You need to understand our platform. We would be like, that’s not how we sell. We sell the transformation. We sell the vision. Technology is a part of it.
How do you create a value proposition for the technology that’s actually going to resonate? That’s what I love about ServiceNow. I love the platforms, because when I approach any lead partner to talk about value, it’s like, here’s what you get with us: the ability to take a single platform to multiple buyers across the enterprise—which any partner who’s focused on an account wants to do.
How do I create a sustained relationship that’s going to cross multiple buyers? You can use our platform to drive managed services, which creates recurring revenue. For a partner who’s thinking, how do I make my numbers year over year, having a single project that starts and ends is challenging. Having recurring revenue for multiple years gives you the freedom to be able to build deeper relationships, to get into the strategy side.
It becomes positioning. I think that’s where platforms really start to differentiate for these consulting firms. It presents a very different type of opportunity to play across the enterprise, be sustainable, and generate sustainable revenue, so that you can truly drive that transformation. That’s what clients want.
Clients are saying, don’t give me an output. Don’t just get me to a go-live, then walk away and say we’re done. I need an outcome—something like an enhanced customer experience, or a digitized function that I never had before. That doesn’t come through a single implementation and then walking away. As technology platforms, we need to understand that and play into that vision and language. I think the more that we create that connection and talk the same talk, the easier it is to build a true partnership. That’s the journey we’re on.
Avanish: I love it. Spot on. It’s been fun to see how things have evolved. I know you’ve made some changes, and we don’t have to go into all the details of the changes you announced—people can find those. Talk a bit about how it is different to go to market with what we now call an ecosystem, rather than what used to be more traditional partner programs. They were more siloed, they were more independent, but the way you’re describing and explaining it, it’s much more of an ecosystem play. Talk a bit about how you see that being different around the context of a platform ecosystem.
Erica: I think it starts with removing segments and walls. We have a natural tendency to say “This is this type of partner, and they do X.” An ISV builds apps; a big consulting firm focuses on implementation; a strategy firm advises. The way we’re approaching it—the way to create an ecosystem—is to not create silos. We’re going to acknowledge the different ways you can work with us, and you tell us how you want to play.
The second thing is, if you want to play there, how are you going to differentiate yourself? Part of that differentiation comes from what you personally bring to the table. The other part is how you work with other partners across the ecosystem to enhance what you’re offering even more. We’re trying to encourage those three-way plays, because to me, that’s where an ecosystem really comes into its own: when you can say, I’m bringing this part, you’re bringing this technology or this solution, and together, we’re really going to be able to deliver value to a client. In today’s world, there are very few projects or transformations that are happening with a single partner anymore.
Avanish: That’s right. Single partner, single offering—I mean, you ultimately have things connected.
Erica: Exactly. Breaking down those silos to allow that inclusivity for all partners to not only be included, but to differentiate themselves—that’s kind of our strategy. I don’t really care if you’re big, or you’re small, or you’re medium size. I want to know what you are bringing to the table that’s unique. Is it the way you implement? Is it your deep industry knowledge? Is it your ability to quickly build solutions? Let’s understand it, promote it, share it, so that everyone can see it. Then let’s promote that cross-collaboration so that we can bring it to our clients and our field in a way that it can be used. To me, that’s a big step forward from the traditional way of approaching partners, which is kind of every man for themselves. That’s just not the world today. Forget technology companies; that’s not how companies function. You can’t survive that way.
Avanish: Exactly. I feel like some companies, some firms, are further along in that thinking. It’s delightful to see you and team continuing that. It’s been a few years, but it’s awesome to see how it’s coming together.
Obviously, you’ve been at the company for a little while. Now you’ve taken on a bigger role, or the complete role. What have you identified as some of the key success factors, or key indicators that this is actually working? Things that are different, that may not have been in place before, but that you feel are starting to make that type of message around ecosystem and transformation resonate in the market as a whole.
Erica: First of all, it starts internally. We need internal change. ServiceNow is an incredibly successful company, as you well know. You were part of that success. When I think about where the success was built, it’s primarily through a direct sales motion and an incredible engineering team that drives unbelievable innovation. When you think about partners, it’s kind of like, how do they fit into that equation? You’re basically challenging the two premises that have been core to the company’s growth so far.
The first measure of success for me is internal. Are we getting pull from our fields to bring partners in, and to bring them in early in the process? One of the things I worked on with the engineering team and the product team is defining areas of what we call “open skies.” These are the areas where we really want our partners to build, because we are not going to build it ourselves. Can we find a partner who has the ability to build here? Those are sort of the things that I look for, to see if we are getting that behavioral, cultural change that we need to drive internally. That’s where we have to kind of focus.
Then, when we think about the external marketplace, it’s about our partners giving us very direct feedback. How are they embracing our new partner program? How are they reflecting in their language some of the things that are priorities for us? How well can they tell the platform story? How are they doing tactical processes like deal registrations, and making sure that they’re executing those processes, participating in our technologies, our systems? Those are all measures for me as well.
Then, ultimately, it comes down to customers. I’ll share this story, because I think it’s a great one. We recently had a customer who said, “I’m only going to sign this deal when you assure me that the partner gets appropriate credit for bringing this deal in. Because it’s important to me.” So, I’m like, yes! [Laughs] Because we need our customers in it too. Our customers are pushing us to say we want the partners to be recognized, because they are that instrumental. We’re able to share that story and say, “This is not important just because I’m telling you it’s important. Our customers are telling us that it’s important.”
It’s really at all layers. It’s internal change; it’s change with our partners and how they’re behaving; and it’s seeing that reflected in the way our customers are responding. I have to look at all of that to see if we’re being successful. Honestly, right now, I do feel we are seeing that shift. But, of course, we still have a long way to go. I mean, I tell people transformations take years. Most of them never end. That’s the journey we’re on.
Avanish: What an amazing story. And kudos to you and the team. That is the kind of milestone that you always aspire to. These successes are always through your relationships: between customer, partner, whoever we are as a vendor. That win-win-win is what you strive for, but it’s not always easy to get to. That’s awesome.
Obviously, you’re providing some of the positive sides of this, but you said yourself, it ain’t easy. It takes a long time. It’s a transformation. What can you share about the hard parts? What have been some of the challenges in your 18 months? You talked a bit about the internal alignment, etc., but are there one or two things you might share about some of the biggest roadblocks?
Erica: Yeah. We’ll start with internal for sure. Getting the organization to understand that partners aren’t the responsibility of the partner organization, but the responsibility of the entire company, is challenging. It’s no different than when we have a customer organization, but everyone would say customers are their ultimate accountability. I need to instill that same feeling for our partners.
In January, we moved our partner organization from part of customer and partner together, into our sales organization. I think that’s been really helpful. When we did our sales kickoff, instead of partners being labeled as an enabler for the strategy, it was one of the five pillars in executing go-to-market. That really started to raise the bar for us. Having that seat at the table with Sales, so that we can constantly bring that partner mindset into the org, has been important. But I will tell you, I think it’s a real challenge.
I also think it helps the field to understand sort of the hero mentality. It’s not about doing it all yourself. Involving a partner—I’m sure people are going to nod their heads—doesn’t mean you didn’t do your job well. It actually means you did do your job well. It’s not about going off and executing on your own. If you’ve brought in a partner, and that partner helps make the deal bigger, or get the deal done faster, or expand it further than you thought, let’s go celebrate you! Let’s go put you up on the pedestal.
That shift has been a challenge. It’s a challenge especially because ServiceNow is an organization that’s had incredible success on a model that has worked. It helps to explain that the model that we’ve used to get to where we are has to be different than the model we’re going to use to get to where we’re going (which is 16 billion, almost double where we are right now). Getting them to embrace that change is challenging.
And then, you know, it’s hard making sure our partners always show up the right way. Bill says you gain trust in drops and you lose it in buckets. That’s sort of the thing he says a lot. [Laughter]
It’s like, you could do a thousand things right, then something goes wrong with one partner interaction, and it feels like you’re back to square one. We have over 2,000 partners in our ecosystem. There are going to be projects that don’t go well. There’s going to be someone who doesn’t show up the right way in the sales process. We can’t allow that to take us backwards on this journey. Everyone fundamentally believes this is where we need to go. That’s another huge challenge. It truly comes down to what I said earlier: it’s all about human behavior. It’s all about change and shift in mindset.
Those are the biggest challenges by far—and just continuing to bring the data to the table. I’ve never been so immersed in data as I am right now. I track everything. This month alone we’ve launched a new program that has doubled the number of deal registrations our partners are bringing us. You’d better bet your bottom dollar that I have been telling that to every executive who’s willing to listen, and translating to that new ACV, and using that number to drive change. You just need to keep it front and center until it becomes a natural motion for the company, and I think we’re still years away from getting there.
Avanish: Motion, yeah. Love it. You’ve said this throughout, but it is a transformation. Quoting Bill McDermott, CEO of ServiceNow, at the end of the day, everything you described relies on trust. It is about people, but it is also about trust. Are we going to trust each other to do the right thing? And it’s about trust with the partners that we collect. Are we going to do the right thing, ultimately, for the customer? I think trust is the root.
Erica, as we wrap, let me ask you this. You kind of alluded to this earlier, but your peers in the industry—at other similar organizations or maybe smaller organizations—are thinking about this ecosystem motion. The economy is in a place where any way you can find non-linear approaches to growth points to an ecosystem mindset. What piece of advice might you have for those peers? For someone who has not quite gone down this path, or has some of the similar history of direct sales and direct delivery—how do they embark on this journey? How do they start changing the mindsets?
Erica: That’s a great question. I think it needs to start with creating a clear case for change. I’ve said to a lot of people, if I had come in and said, “Well, I’m here, so I might as well transform something, since I took on this new role,” we would not have gotten nearly as far as we have today. The truth is, the case for change, for why we needed to take this ecosystem approach, is deeply rooted in where we want to be as a company.
Everything we do is tied to our ambition to be a true enterprise software company, to be a true platform company, to be $16 billion. I know it feels like kind of a basic starting point, but sometimes transformations happen, and everyone says, “It’s a trend. We need to get the ecosystem. We need more partners in place.” But we very rarely define the why, and root that why in what is going on in the business.
I feel like that’s really helped me to get support from our CIO, our CFO, Bill, and our chief commercial officer. I always come back to, if this matters—if you want to raise the bar on NPS, and have our partners deliver 92% of our implementations—then we have to invest in technology to allow us to track and manage the quality of the implementations. If you want us to double our net new ACV in record time, then you have to acknowledge that we can’t just have our partners supporting our field. Our partners need to be able to create new opportunities, and we need to define open skies for them to play in. I always come back to that.
I think storytelling is the ultimate superpower. Every day, I spend time telling that story, painting that case for change, educating my team on how to do it. I’m telling the partners the story I’m trying to create so that they understand why I’m asking them to do the things I’m asking them to do. Why should you care about deal registrations? Because I want to tell your story of how much source is coming from that new ECV you’re driving—that’s what matters to this company. “Oh, I get it. Okay, let me go execute now.” If you have that foundation, and you spend the time to tell that story, I think it takes you a really long way. If you approach it as anything other than, “This is what we need to do,” or “This is what the trends are telling us,” or “This is what the partners are asking for,” I truly think it falls flat. Once you get that down, and everyone is understanding and behind that, you’ve got the wind at your back.
It becomes about defining the experience you want to create: putting the processes, the technology, the tools, and the programs in place, and getting those handful of metrics that you are going to constantly hammer home every step of the way. Don’t give up. It’s a long journey, but it’s so fun. It’s so fun.
People always ask me, are you just naturally passionate? I’m like, I’m sitting here, eight months pregnant, doing this because I really feel energized—because we’re like driving a change that I fundamentally believe is so important to our company, to our shareholders. It’s making a difference.
I’ll get off my soapbox, but that’s really how I feel.
Avanish: What an amazing point to wrap this up on. Congratulations on the new role, and congratulations on the impending arrival of baby number two. From the outside, as a huge, huge, fan of the company and the team, I couldn’t be happier that someone like you has taken the helm and is going to take it to the next level. Thank you, best of luck, and I look forward to staying in touch.
Erica: Same here. Thanks so much, Avanish.